An examination of social reality tells us that in different roles the same person may be both perpetrator and victim at the same time.  But--and it should be no surprise--Scripture tells us that too. We find that right within Jephthah's story. It begins with the fact he is an illegitimate child, whose relatives drive him out of the country. Now, to be fair, the sermon noted that, briefly, but left one with the impression that Jephthah's "maleness" inevitably assured that, even though he had been a victim as a child, he would end up a perpetrator as an adult; at any rate, he forgot what it was like to be a victim when he made his rash vow and callously destroyed the life of somebody else.

But one can read this part of the story in other ways than progressive denial of his victimhood. One could read it as being both a victim and a perpetrator, at one and the same time. Jephthah's action was utterly thoughtless--a point subtly made by the derivation of his name, which means "he opens"--as in "he opens his big mouth without thinking."

As some commentators point out, his action smacks a bit of trying to bribe God (others emphasize his faith, in that he expects much of God and offers something in return: this was not a sacrifice offered before the fact, as a bribe); and he does violate the Biblical prohibition on child sacrifice--although the writer of Judges curiously does not make much of either point. Still, his action is closer to thoughtlessness than to cruelty; the price is far higher than anyone, least of all himself, could have imagined, and he is in a sense a victim--if not of chance, then of his own actions.

That is a pattern found in Scripture again and again. At the very beginning, one has Cain and Abel; the latter a victim, the former the perpetrator. Except there is that strange thing about the "mark of Cain" in Genesis 4:15. We often assume it was a mark of condemnation, something like a sex offender's register on which his name was forever to be recorded, so that his deed would never be forgotten. It was not: "So the Lord put a mark on Cain, in order that anyone meeting him should not kill him." It was not a punishment; it was a mark of grace, to keep him from becoming a victim himself.

Then there is the story in II Samuel 14:4-11: the fiction presented to David by the wise woman of Tekoa, when David was paralyzed by indecision, following Absalom's murder of his half-brother Amnon, who had raped his half-sister--Absalom's full sister--Tamar. Perhaps it is still clear enough at this point that Tamar is a victim, and Amnon the perpetrator, who deserved what he got: but try if you will to get such clarity about Absalom. Perpetrator of a murder, although perhaps a justified murder; victim of David's incapacity to decide what to do; ultimately an attempted patricide. But surely the story told by the wise woman is clear enough: her one son was killed by the other, who will now be victim of the lex talionis: perpetrator and victim at one and the same time.

Now, the suggestion behind the story is that the way the mother sees the situation is also how God--nota bene, God the Mother--sees the situation. Yes, God stands with the victim, loves the victim like a parent loves a child--God hears the cry of the blood of Abel (Gen. 4:10); of the suffering of the Hebrews in Egypt, and of the poor and oppressed later in Israel, when the same Hebrews who were slaves in Egypt in turn became oppressors of the weak in their own society (and remember, Amos does not let women off the hook for this: Amos 4:1).

Yet having heard the cry of the blood of Abel, God still grants the mark of grace to Cain, that there not be another victim. While the enforcer of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," God sees the living son, and Absalom, not only as perpetrators, but also as victims (or potential victims)--and seeing the ambiguity of the situation, responds to them as victims, rather than perpetrators. That Absalom in the end was not able to respond from his side, and went on to repeat, indeed increase his crimes, does not alter the fundamental statement here about how God sees things.

Since I heard this sermon, in The Netherlands we have had an affair in which the father of a child whom the courts adjudged to have been the victim of a pedophile ambushed the man (after he had finished his prison sentence and psychological treatment) as he came home from work, and cut the man's throat. This is not the first such case this year, although it is the first to make headlines. In the wake of this killing, the Victim Support Agency announced that if it did learn of a parent like this planning to murder a pedophile, it would not notify the police, as that would violate its "responsibility to the victim." The issues involved are not "dead" Bible history with Able, Jephthah, and Absalom.

Donald Mader is assistant pastor at the Pauluskerk (St. Paul's Church) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, which has a long-time ministry to marginalized social groups including sexual minorities.  He has written numerous articles on Christianity and sexuality.